The Vanished
Of Punjab
By Rajesh Ramachandran
12 Aug , 2005
Outlook Magazine
* 2,097 bodies cremated in three crematoriums in Amritsar district.
All confirmed by the CBI.
* Police admit custody
of only 99 'militants.'
* Compensation awarded
to 109 families by NHRC. Even after 10 years, 2,000 families still await
justice.
September 6 is an
unpleasant milestone in the story of death by disappearance in Punjab.
On that day, 10 years ago, Akali Dal leader Jaswant Singh Khalra, who
told the world the shocking story of young
men in Punjab disappearing and being illegally cremated, was himself
made to disappear. The trial into Khalra's alleged abduction and murder
by the Punjab Police, then the fiefdom of supercop K.InJanuary 2005,
Akali leader Khalra revealed thousands of extra-judicial killings and
illegal cremations that had happened since 1984. He was later abducted
and never heard from.P.S. Gill, is still going on in a Patiala court.
And the trials and tribulations of the families of those who disappeared
in the murderous days of militancy seem to be endless, their search
for justice almost a lost cause.
The allegations
of police brutality in Punjab between 1984 and 1994 is more chilling
than any horror film. Human rights activists allege the police picked
up thousands of young men-some confirmed militants, some sympathisers
and many innocents-from across the state, killed them in cold blood
and despatched them as unidentified corpses to various crematoriums
across the state. There were more weighed down in canals and rivers.
No one knows how many disappeared in this manner. However, 2,097 illegal
cremations, pertaining to just three crematoriums in Amritsar district-Durgyana
Mandir, Municipal Committee and Tarn Taran-have been confirmed by a
CBI investigation.
The NHRC, inquiring
into the entire case for the last eight years now, has tended to concentrate
on the illegality of the cremations rather than the allegations of rights
violation and cold-blooded murders. It has also been slow in awarding
compensation to families of those cremated. In fact, last November,
the NHRC awarded a compensation of Rs 2.5 lakh each to only 109 families.
As many as 1,886 families have got no relief.
Of the 109 cases
where compensation has been paid, the Punjab Police has admitted that
it had custody of 99 persons before they were killed. The police claims
that all of them were killed in encounters and they could not safeguard
the lives of terrorists. In almost all the cases, the police's story
is the same: the man in custody was being taken, usually in the dead
of night, to recover arms when other militants attacked the police party
and killed the terrorist in custody. But not a single policeman was
recorded as killed in these encounters where automatic weapons were
often used. But the NHRC did not question why only those in custody
were killed during such encounters. This despite the NHRC noting in
its findings that "the state of Punjab is, therefore, accountable
and vicariously responsible for the infringement of the indefeasible
right to life of those 109 deceased persons as it failed to safe-guard
their lives and persons against the risk of avoidable harm".
The NHRC refused
to respond to Outlook's questionnaire or comment on the various contentious
issues since it could prejudice the process of inquiry. Human rights
activists allege the NHRC has been softer on the police than the victims.
They say the police should have been put through more stringent probing,
especially their claim of having had only 99 victims in custody. One
of the key petitioners, the Committee for Information and Initiative
on Punjab (CIIP), says on the basis of its documentation that the police
had custody of 146 people before they were killed and illegally cremated.
Then the NHRC arrived at the figure of 109 through its own "independent
analysis". According to the petitioners, the police have admitted
custody in certain cases because the families got these arrests documented
by writing petitions or sending telegrams to public functionaries.
The Punjab Police
has always claimed a degree of immunity on the grounds that this was
a 'war against terror' and its officers should not be held guilty for
custodial deaths and cremations. In a recent hearing, the police counsel
even argued that the Indian state (and its security forces) had behaved
in a far more humane fashion in Punjab than the US forces in Iraq. Altaf
Ahmed, the counsel who drew this analogy, was not available for comment.
It is another issue that even in war, custodial deaths are illegal under
the Geneva Conventions.
The NHRC, on its
part, has virtually limited the scope of its inquiry to illegal cremations
in the three crematoriums of Amritsar. The CIIP had documented hundreds
of similar illegal cremations in other districts of Punjab, like Faridkot,
Kapurthala, Ludhiana and Mansa. But the Commission has refused to look
into these.Also, the NHRC is yet to question the snail's pace at which
the CBI is prosecuting the Punjab Police officers. Only about 30 cases
are being tried in Patiala and even Khalra's case has not reached its
conclusion. This despite a special police officer, Kuldip Singh, testifying
recently in the Patiala court that he had seen former Punjab Police
chief K.P.S. Gill going into the room where Khalra was kept a week before
he was killed. According to rights activists, too many high-profile
officers are involved in the case, which explains why the case is making
slow progress.
The Khalra case
had its beginnings in a press conference held by the Akali leader in
January 1995. In it, he revealed that thousands of extra-judicial killings
had happened in Punjab since 1984 and that these bodies were illegally
cremated all over the state. He had the records of three crematoriums
in Amritsar, which he made public. But the Punjab and Haryana High Court
didn't entertain his petition. Soon after, he was abducted. A telegram
on Khalra's abduction, sent by the then Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak
Committee president Gurcharan Singh Tohra, was treated as a petition
by the Supreme Court, which asked the CBI to investigate the case as
also the illegal cremations.
The CBI came up
with the figure of 2,097 illegal cremations in the three crematoriums.
Among these, the CBI identified 582 bodies, provisionally identified
another 278 and listed 1,237 as unidentified. The Supreme Court referred
the matter to the NHRC in December 1996, giving the latter all authority
to deal with the issue. Even when the Centre challenged the NHRC's authority,
the Supreme Court held in September 1998 that, "in deciding the
matters referred by this court, the NHRC is given a free hand and is
not circumscribed by any conditions". That is, the CBI would look
into the culpability of the police officers in killing/cremating people
and the NHRC would probe the remaining issues, particularly those related
to human rights violations. Of course, the Supreme Court expected a
"quick conclusion" from the NHRC. That was seven years ago.
After the CBI identified
582 bodies, the Punjab Police admitted they knew the identity of 376
bodies. According to its affidavit, 321 were identified on the spot.
This means that 65 per cent of the bodies were identified before cremation,
yet the police did not hand over the bodies to the families. The CIIP's
Ashok Agrwaal claims that his organisation could place an additional
175 corpses, taking the count of fully identified bodies to 757. He
says: "There was no justification for the cremation of identified
bodies terming them unidentified/unclaimed, unless it was a matter of
policy at the highest level of the Punjab Police. If cremation was a
matter of policy, then it indicates that the murder of these persons
could have been a matter of policy too".
Despite a decade
of delay and apathy, the families of the 'missing and cremated' are
waiting for justice. As for the CIIP, it sees its 10-year-long fight
as not one just about Punjab. Says Agrwaal: "The issue is about
the impunity with which the institutions of the state trampled on the
most basic of fundamental rights-the right to life."